Electric car charge stations may be in Albia’s future

Chances are pretty good that Albia will soon have a station for electric cars to recharge.

Chariton Valley Electric Cooperative passed its first hurdle Tuesday when the Monroe County Board of Supervisors gave its approval to accommodate electrical hook-up when it wires the new HVAC system at the courthouse.

CVEC is working with ChargePoint, a California company that is setting up charging stations for an ever growing number of electric and gas/electric hybrid vehicles.

The next step locally for CVEC is to gain permission from the Albia City Council to provide two parking spaces on the inside of the square to place two ChargePoint Express 200 DC fast chargers.

It was not clear on Tuesday if the spaces would be available to electric vehicles owners only or if people with electric vehicles would be able to charge their cars when the spaces were available.

The ChargePoint Express 200 provides a maximum of 200 miles of range per house of charging with a 50kW output. It charges all vehicles with DC fast charging and a Tesla car with an adapter. The ChargePoint Express 200 is only 13 inches deep and is one-third the weight of other dual port DC stations. Extremely important for this part of the country, it operates over a wide temperature range of -31 degrees to 120 degrees Farenheit.

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ChargePoint will market the charger through a nationwide system used by electric car owners. One of the sales points is that electric car owners will be drawn to the community because it has a charger and will spend the hour or two it takes to recharge a car doing business in the community.

An electric car user would pay for their own electricity with a credit card. According to “Torque News,” a website dedicated to the development of the electric car industry, the cost to charge a car is between $1.50 per hour to just under $4 per hour. There are some places that actually offer charging services for free.